Gibson’s father was awarded US$145,000 in a work-related-injury lawsuit against the New York Central Railroad on February 14, 1968, and soon afterwards relocated his family to West Pymble, Sydney, Australia. Mel was twelve years old at the time. The move to his grandmother’s native Australia was for economic reasons, and his father’s expectation that the Australian Defence Forces would reject his eldest son for the draft during the Vietnam War.

Gibson’s screen acting career began in 1976, with a role on the Australian television series The Sullivans. In his career, Gibson has appeared in 43 films, including the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon film series. In addition to acting, Gibson has also directed four films, including Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ; produced 11 films; and written two films. Films either starring or directed by Mel Gibson have earned over US$2.5 billion, in the United States alone. Gibson’s filmography includes television series, feature films, television films, and animated films.

Gibson studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney. The students at NIDA were classically trained in the British-theater tradition rather than in preparation for screen acting. As students, Gibson and actress Judy Davis played the leads in Romeo and Juliet, and Gibson played the role of Queen Titania in an experimental production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After graduation in 1977, Gibson immediately began work on the filming of Mad Max, but continued to work as a stage actor, and joined the State Theatre Company of South Australia in Adelaide. Gibson’s theatrical credits include the character Estragon (opposite Geoffrey Rush) in Waiting for Godot, and the role of Biff Loman in a 1982 production of Death of a Salesman in Sydney. Gibson’s most recent theatrical performance, opposite Sissy Spacek, was the 1993 production of Love Letters by A. R. Gurney, in Telluride, Colorado.

While a student at NIDA, Gibson made his film debut in the 1977 film Summer City, for which he was paid $400. Gibson then played the title character in the film Mad Max (1979). He was paid $15,000 for this role. Shortly after making the film he did a season with the South Australian Theatre Company. During this period he shared a $30 a week apartment in Adelaide with his future wife Robyn. After Mad Max, Gibson also played a mentally slow youth in the film Tim (also 1979). During this period Gibson also appeared in Australian television series guest roles. He appeared in serial The Sullivans as naval lieutenant Ray Henderson, in police procedural Cop Shop, and in the pilot episode of prison serial Punishment which was produced in 1980, screened 1981.

Gibson met Robyn Denise Moore in the late 1970s, soon after filming Mad Max, in Adelaide, South Australia. At the time, Robyn was a dental nurse and Mel was an unknown actor working for the South Australian Theatre Company. On June 7, 1980, Mel and Robyn were married in a Catholic church in Forestville, New South Wales. They have one daughter, Hannah (b. 1980), and six sons: Edward (b. 1982), Christian (b. 1982), William (b. 1985), Louis (b. 1988), Milo (b. 1990), and Thomas (b. 1999); and three grandchildren as of 2011.

The 1981 Peter Weir film Gallipoli is about a group of young men from rural Western Australia who enlist in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I. They are sent to invade the Ottoman Empire, where they take part in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign. During the course of the movie, the young men slowly lose their innocence about the war. The climax of the movie centers on the catastrophic AIF offensive known as the Battle of the Nek.

Gibson gained very favorable notices from film critics when he first entered the cinematic scene, as well as comparisons to several classic movie stars. In 1982, Vincent Canby wrote that “Mr. Gibson recalls the young Steve McQueen… I can’t define ‘star quality,’ but whatever it is, Mr. Gibson has it.” Gibson has also been likened to “a combination Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart.” Gibson’s roles in the Mad Max series of films, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli (1981), and the Lethal Weapon series of films earned him the label of “action hero”. Later, Gibson expanded into a variety of acting projects including human dramas such as the Franco Zeffirelli film version of Hamlet (1990), and comedic roles such as those in Maverick (1994) and What Women Want (2000). He expanded beyond acting into directing and producing, with: The Man Without a Face (1993), Braveheart (1995), The Passion of the Christ (2004), and Apocalypto (2006). Jess Cagle of Time compared Gibson with Cary Grant, Sean Connery, and Robert Redford. Connery once suggested Gibson should play the next James Bond to Connery’s “M”. Gibson turned down the role, reportedly because he feared being typecast.

Gibson was banned from driving in Ontario, Canada for three months in 1984, after rear-ending a car in Toronto while under the influence of alcohol. He retreated to his Australian farm for over a year to recover, but he continued to struggle with drinking. Despite this problem, Gibson gained a reputation in Hollywood for professionalism and punctuality such that frequent collaborator Richard Donner was shocked when Gibson confided that he was drinking five pints of beer for breakfast. Reflecting in 2003 and 2004, Gibson said that despair in his mid-30s led him to contemplate suicide, and he meditated on Christ’s Passion to heal his wounds. He took more time off acting in 1991 and sought professional help. That year, Gibson’s attorneys were unsuccessful at blocking the Sunday Mirror from publishing what Gibson shared at AA meetings. In 1992, Gibson provided financial support to Hollywood’s Recovery Center, saying, “Alcoholism is something that runs in my family. It’s something that’s close to me. People do come back from it, and it’s a miracle.”

Mel Gibson’s first American film was Mark Rydell’s drama The River (1984), in which he and Sissy Spacek played struggling Tennessee farmers. Gibson then starred in the Gothic romance Mrs. Soffel (also 1984) for Australian director Gillian Armstrong. He and Matthew Modine played condemned convict brothers opposite Diane Keaton as the warden’s wife who visits them to read the Bible. In 1985, after working on four films in a row, Gibson took almost two years off at his Australian cattle station. He returned to play the role of Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon (1987), a film which helped to cement his status as a Hollywood “leading man”. Gibson’s next film was Robert Towne’s Tequila Sunrise (1988), followed by Lethal Weapon 2 (1989). Gibson next starred in three films back-to-back, all released in 1990: Bird on a Wire, Air America, and Hamlet.

In 1985, Gibson was named the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People, the first person to be named so. Gibson quietly declined the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government in 1995 as a protest against France’s resumption of nuclear testing in the Southwest Pacific. On July 25, 1997, Gibson was named an honorary Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), in recognition of his “service to the Australian film industry”. The award was honorary because substantive awards are made only to Australian citizens.

After his success in Hollywood with the Lethal Weapon series, Gibson began to move into producing and directing. With partner Bruce Davey, Gibson formed Icon Productions in 1989 in order to make Hamlet. In addition to producing or co-producing many of Gibson’s own star vehicles, Icon has turned out many other small films, ranging from Immortal Beloved to An Ideal Husband. Gibson has taken supporting roles in some of these films, such as The Million Dollar Hotel and The Singing Detective. Gibson has also produced a number of projects for television, including a biopic on the Three Stooges and the 2008 PBS documentary Carrier. Icon has grown from being just a production company to also be an international distribution company and film exhibitor in Australia and New Zealand.

Gibson has credited his directors, particularly George Miller, Peter Weir, and Richard Donner, with teaching him the craft of filmmaking and influencing him as a director. According to Robert Downey Jr., studio executives encouraged Gibson in 1989 to try directing, an idea he rebuffed at the time. Gibson made his directorial debut in 1993 with The Man Without a Face, followed two years later by Braveheart, which earned Gibson the Academy Award for Best Director. Gibson had long planned to direct a remake of Fahrenheit 451, but in 1999 the project was indefinitely postponed because of scheduling conflicts. Gibson was scheduled to direct Robert Downey Jr. in a Los Angeles stage production of Hamlet in January 2001, but Downey’s drug relapse ended the project. In 2002, while promoting We Were Soldiers and Signs to the press, Gibson mentioned that he was planning to pare back on acting and return to directing. In September 2002, Gibson announced that he would direct a film called The Passion in Aramaic and Latin with no subtitles because he hoped to “transcend language barriers with filmic storytelling.” In 2004, he released the controversial film The Passion of the Christ, with subtitles, which he co-wrote, co-produced, and directed. The film went on to become the highest-grossing rated R film of all time with $370,782,930 in U.S. box office sales. Gibson directed a few episodes of Complete Savages for the ABC network. In 2006, he directed the action-adventure film Apocalypto, his second film to feature sparse dialogue in a non-English language. In November 2016, film critic Matt Zoller Seitz named Gibson as “the pre-eminent religious filmmaker in the United States”.

In a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters, Gibson said: “God is the only one who knows how many children we should have, and we should be ready to accept them. One can’t decide for oneself who comes into this world and who doesn’t. That decision doesn’t belong to us.”

In 1995, Mel Gibson directed, produced, and starred in Braveheart, a biographical film of Sir William Wallace, a Scottish nationalist who was executed in 1305 for “high treason” against King Edward I of England. Gibson received two Academy Awards, Best Director and Best Picture, for his second directorial effort. In winning the Academy Award for Best Director, Gibson became only the sixth actor-turned-filmmaker to do so. Braveheart influenced the Scottish nationalist movement and helped to revive the film genre of the historical epic; the Battle of Stirling Bridge sequence is considered by critics to be one of the all-time best-directed battle scenes.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) accused Gibson of homophobia after a December 1991 interview in the Spanish newspaper El País in which he made derogatory comments about homosexuals. Gibson later defended his comments and rejected calls to apologize even as he faced fresh accusations of homophobia in the wake of his film Braveheart. However, Gibson joined GLAAD in hosting 10 lesbian and gay filmmakers for an on-location seminar on the set of the movie Conspiracy Theory in January 1997. In 1999, when asked about the comments to El País, Gibson said, “I shouldn’t have said it, but I was tickling a bit of vodka during that interview, and the quote came back to bite me on the ass.”

Gibson was paid a record salary of $25 million to appear in The Patriot (2000). It grossed over $100 million, as did two other films he featured in that year Chicken Run, and What Women Want. In 2002, Gibson appeared in the Vietnam War drama We Were Soldiers and M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, which became the highest-grossing film of Gibson’s acting career. While promoting Signs, Gibson said that he no longer wanted to be a movie star and would only act in film again if the script were truly extraordinary. In 2010, Gibson appeared in Edge of Darkness, which marked his first starring role since 2002 and was an adaptation of the BBC miniseries, Edge of Darkness. In 2010, following an outburst at his ex-girlfriend that was made public, Gibson was dropped from the talent agency of William Morris Endeavor.

Gibson has said that he started drinking at the age of 13. In a 2002 interview about his time at NIDA, Gibson said, “I had really good highs but some very low lows. I found out recently I’m manic depressive.”

Gibson is a property investor, with multiple properties in Malibu, California, several locations in Costa Rica, a private island in Fiji, and properties in Australia. In December 2004, Gibson sold his 300 acres (1.2 km) Australian farm in the Kiewa Valley for $6 million. Also in December 2004, Gibson purchased Mago Island in Fiji from Tokyu Corporation of Japan for $15 million. Descendants of the original native inhabitants of Mago, who were displaced in the 1860s, have protested the purchase. Gibson stated it was his intention to retain the pristine environment of the undeveloped island. In early 2005, he sold his 45,000 acres (180 km) Montana ranch to a neighbor. In April 2007 he purchased a 400 acres (1.6 km) ranch in Costa Rica for $26 million, and in July 2007 he sold his 76 acres (31 ha) Tudor estate in Connecticut (which he purchased in 1994 for $9 million) for $40 million to an unnamed buyer. Also that month, he sold a Malibu property for $30 million that he had purchased for $24 million two years before. In 2008, he purchased the Malibu home of actors David Duchovny and Téa Leoni.

In 2004, he publicly spoke out against taxpayer-funded embryonic stem-cell research that involves the cloning and destruction of human embryos. In March 2005, he condemned the outcome of the Terri Schiavo case, referring to Schiavo’s death as “state-sanctioned murder”.

Gibson questioned the Iraq War in March 2004. In 2006, Gibson said that the “fearmongering” depicted in his film Apocalypto “reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys.” He later said in 2016 that he is anti-war but has an appreciation for the sacrifices made by “warriors”.

Gibson’s Traditionalist Catholic upbringing was also the target of criticism. In a 2006 interview with Diane Sawyer, Gibson stated that he feels that his “human rights were violated” by the often vitriolic attacks on his person, his family, and his religious beliefs which were sparked by The Passion.

After 26 years of marriage, Mel and Robyn Gibson separated on July 29, 2006. In a 2011 interview, Gibson stated that the separation began the day following his arrest for drunk driving in Malibu. Robyn Gibson filed for divorce on April 13, 2009, citing irreconcilable differences. In a joint statement, the Gibsons declared, “Throughout our marriage and separation we have always striven to maintain the privacy and integrity of our family and will continue to do so.” The divorce filing followed the March 2009 release of photographs appearing to show him on a beach embracing Russian pianist Oksana Grigorieva. Gibson’s divorce was finalized on December 23, 2011, and the settlement with his ex-wife was said to be the highest in Hollywood history at over $400 million. The couple reportedly did not have a prenuptial agreement; because California is a community property state, Robyn was entitled to half of everything earned during the marriage.

On July 28, 2006, Gibson was arrested by Sheriff’s Deputy James Mee of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for driving under the influence (DUI) while speeding in his vehicle with an open container of alcohol, which is illegal in California. According to a 2011 article in Vanity Fair, Gibson first told the arresting officer, “My life is over. I’m fucked. Robyn’s going to leave me.” According to the arrest report, Gibson exploded into an angry tirade when the arresting officer would not allow him to drive home. Gibson climaxed with the words, “Fucking Jews… the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?”

On August 17, 2006, Gibson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor drunken-driving charge and was sentenced to three years’ probation. He was ordered to attend self-help meetings five times a week for four-and-a-half months and three times a week for the remainder of the first year of his probation. He was also ordered to attend a First Offenders Program, was fined $1,300, and his license was restricted for 90 days.

Gibson donated $500,000 to the El Mirador Basin Project to protect the last tract of virgin rain forest in Central America and to fund archeological excavations in the “cradle of Mayan civilization”. In July 2007, Gibson again visited Central America to make arrangements for donations to the indigenous population. Gibson met with Costa Rican President Óscar Arias to discuss how to “channel the funds”. During the same month, Gibson pledged to give financial assistance to a Malaysian company named Green Rubber Global for a tire recycling factory located in Gallup, New Mexico. While on a business trip to Singapore in September 2007, Gibson donated to a local charity for children with chronic and terminal illnesses. Gibson is also a supporter of Angels at Risk, a nonprofit organization focusing on education about drug and alcohol abuse among teens.

On April 28, 2009, Gibson made a red carpet appearance with Grigorieva. Grigorieva, who had previously had a son with actor Timothy Dalton, gave birth to Gibson’s daughter Lucia on October 30, 2009. By April 2010, Gibson and Grigorieva had split. On June 21, 2010, Grigorieva filed a restraining order against Gibson to keep him away from her and their child. The restraining order was modified the next day regarding Gibson’s contact with their child. Gibson obtained a restraining order against Grigorieva on June 25, 2010.

In June 2010, Gibson was in Brownsville, Texas, filming scenes for the film How I Spent My Summer Vacation, about a career criminal put in a tough prison in Mexico. In October 2010, it was reported that Gibson would have a small role in The Hangover Part II, but he was removed from the film after the cast and crew objected to his involvement.

Grigorieva accused Gibson of domestic violence, leading to an investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in July 2010. On July 9, 2010, some audio recordings of a rant, allegedly directed by Gibson toward Grigorieva, were posted on the internet. The same day Gibson was dropped by his agency, William Morris Endeavor. Gibson’s estranged wife Robyn filed a court statement declaring that she never experienced any abuse from Gibson, while forensic experts have questioned the validity of some of the tapes, Gibson himself did not deny they were accurate at the time. In March 2011, Mel Gibson agreed to plead no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge. In April 2011, Gibson finally broke his silence about the incident in question. In an interview with Deadline Hollywood, Gibson expressed gratitude to longtime friends Whoopi Goldberg and Jodie Foster, both of whom had spoken publicly in his defense. About the recordings, Gibson said,

In July 2010, Gibson had been recorded during a phone call with Oksana Grigorieva suggesting that if she got “raped by a pack of niggers”, she would be to blame. Gibson was barred from coming near Grigorieva or their daughter due to a domestic violence-related restraining order. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department launched a domestic violence investigation against Gibson, later dropped when Gibson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge.

In 2011, it was announced that Gibson had commissioned a screenplay from Joe Eszterhas about the Maccabees. The film is to be distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures. The announcement generated significant controversy. In April 2012, Eszterhas wrote a letter to Gibson accusing him of sabotaging their film about the Maccabees because he “hates Jews”, and citing a series of private incidents during which he allegedly heard Gibson express extremely racist views. Although written as a private letter, it was subsequently published on a film industry website. In response, Gibson stated that he still intends to make the film, but will not base it upon Eszterhas’s script, which he called substandard. Eszterhas then claimed his son had secretly recorded a number of Gibson’s alleged “hateful rants”. In a 2012 interview, Gibson explained that the Maccabees film was still in preparation. He explained that he was drawn to the Biblical account of the uprising due to its similarity to the American Old West genre.

Gibson starred in The Beaver, a domestic drama about a depressed alcoholic directed by former Maverick co-star Jodie Foster. The Beaver premiered at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas on March 16, 2011. The opening weekend in 22 theaters was considered a flop; it made $104,000 which comes to a per-theater average of $4,745. The film’s distributor, Summit Entertainment, had originally planned for a wide release of The Beaver for the weekend of May 20, but after the initial box-office returns for the film, the company changed course and decided instead to give the film a “limited art-house run”. Michael Cieply of The New York Times observed on June 5, 2011, that the film had cleared just about $1 million, making it a certified “flop”. Director Jodie Foster opined that the film did not do well with American audiences because it was a dramedy, and “very often Americans are not comfortable with [that]”.

In August 2011, Gibson settled with Grigorieva, who was awarded $750,000, joint legal custody, and a house in Sherman Oaks, California until their three-year-old daughter Lucia turns 18. In 2013, Grigorieva sued her attorneys accusing them of advising her to sign a bad agreement, including a term that taking legal action against Gibson would compromise her financial settlement.

In a 2011 interview, Gibson said of his philanthropic works, “It gives you perspective. It’s one of my faults, you tend to focus on yourself a lot. Which is not always the healthiest thing for your psyche or anything else. If you take a little time out to think about other people, it’s good. It’s uplifting.”

Gibson has expressed an intention to direct a movie set during the Viking Age, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Like The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, he wants this speculative film to feature dialogue in period languages. However, DiCaprio ultimately opted out of the project. In a 2012 interview, Gibson announced that the project, which he has titled Berserker, was still moving forward.

Gibson also played two villains: Voz in Machete Kills in 2013, opposite Danny Trejo, and Conrad Stonebanks in The Expendables 3 opposite Sylvester Stallone in 2014.

In 2014, Gibson signed on to direct Hacksaw Ridge, a World War II drama based on the true story of conscientious objector Desmond T. Doss, played by Andrew Garfield. The film premiered at the 73rd Venice Film Festival in September 2016 and received what The New Zealand Herald calls “rave reviews”. It has won or been nominated for many awards, including Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture, Best Director for Gibson, and Best Actor for Garfield. Hacksaw Ridge was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing. The film grossed $164 million worldwide, four times its production costs.

As of 2014, Gibson is in a relationship with former champion equestrian vaulter and writer Rosalind Ross. Ross gave birth to their son, and Gibson’s ninth child, Lars Gerard, on January 20, 2017 in Los Angeles.

Gibson’s controversial statements resulted in his being blacklisted in Hollywood for almost a decade. Robert Downey Jr. and journalist Allison Hope Weiner advocated for forgiveness for Gibson in 2014. In 2016, Gibson’s film Hacksaw Ridge received Academy Award nominations, and actors and agencies were becoming eager to work with him again, which was perceived as a “thaw” for Gibson.

In June 2016, Gibson announced that he will reunite with Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace to make a sequel for The Passion of the Christ, focusing on the resurrection of Jesus. In early November 2016, Gibson revealed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that the sequel’s title will be The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection. He also stated that the project could “probably be three years off” because “it’s a big subject”.

Gibson revealed in a 2016 interview with Jorge Ramos that he voted for neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States presidential election.

Gibson appeared in the lead role of director S. Craig Zahler’s police brutality-themed film Dragged Across Concrete, released in 2018. He then starred in The Professor and the Madman – he and the director both disowned the film.

In May 2018, it was announced that Gibson would be directing a WWII film titled Destroyer. Destroyer, similar to Hacksaw Ridge, will also deal with the Battle of Okinawa in the Pacific Theater, although from a different front. It will be based on the heroic story of the crew belonging to USS Laffey (DD-724), who defended their ship from 22 kamikaze attacks.

As of 2019, Gibson’s cancelled projects included a Richard Donner-helmed film with the working title Sam and George.

In October 2020, Mel Gibson released a statement regarding Azerbaijan’s aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) and the Armenian people, expressing his solidarity with Armenians.